This study is based on data resulted from the first wave of “Generations and Gender Survey” (United Nations, 2005). Our analyses concentrate on three Eastern European countries – Bulgaria, Romania and Russia – focusing on men and women aged 65 years or older. We are interested in two forms of living arrangements of parents with non-resident child(ren) and childless people (living alone or with partner), aiming to illustrate the similarities and disparities regarding the self-rated health and the subjective well-being (positive and negative affects). This preliminary study offers an exploratory and descriptive analysis of data, using two different logistic regressions replicated for each country.
Living alone is more prevalent for women, Romania having the highest weight of lonely childless females, and Russia the highest percent of lonely mothers. Men living with partner and with non-resident children strongly exceeds the value for women, Bulgarian men taking the leading position.
Self-rated health reveals the highest values of “bad health” for lone old women, both childless and with non-resident children in all three countries. It seems that being childless and living with partner favors “good health”, at least for Bulgarian and Romanian women. Instead, we cannot identify a consistent pattern among old men.
Subjective well-being also presents variations and similarities by gender, living arrangements and having or not children. Alone old women from all three countries – childless or not – report in a greater extend the sense of emptiness and missing people around, and declare more often feelings of depression and loneliness. Again, the pattern for men is less clear.

Reference

@inbook{Cristina2015a,
author = {Faludi Cristina},
title = {Aranjamentele de viață, starea de sănătate și singurătatea la vârstnicii din Bulgaria, România și Rusia},
year = {2015},
booktitle = {Funcții și disfuncții ale familiei contemporane. O abordare socio-psiho-medicală},
publisher = {Editura Universitară, București},
pages = {84-124},
month = {Mar},
timestamp = {04.08.2015},
address = {Bd. Bălcescu Nicolae, 27-33, București-Sector 1, București, 010045},
chapter = {5},
series = {Psihologie},
edition = {1},
abstract = {This study is based on data resulted from the first wave of “Generations and Gender Survey” (United Nations, 2005). Our analyses concentrate on three Eastern European countries – Bulgaria, Romania and Russia – focusing on men and women aged 65 years or older. We are interested in two forms of living arrangements of parents with non-resident child(ren) and childless people (living alone or with partner), aiming to illustrate the similarities and disparities regarding the self-rated health and the subjective well-being (positive and negative affects). This preliminary study offers an exploratory and descriptive analysis of data, using two different logistic regressions replicated for each country.
Living alone is more prevalent for women, Romania having the highest weight of lonely childless females, and Russia the highest percent of lonely mothers. Men living with partner and with non-resident children strongly exceeds the value for women, Bulgarian men taking the leading position.
Self-rated health reveals the highest values of “bad health” for lone old women, both childless and with non-resident children in all three countries. It seems that being childless and living with partner favors “good health”, at least for Bulgarian and Romanian women. Instead, we cannot identify a consistent pattern among old men.
Subjective well-being also presents variations and similarities by gender, living arrangements and having or not children. Alone old women from all three countries – childless or not – report in a greater extend the sense of emptiness and missing people around, and declare more often feelings of depression and loneliness. Again, the pattern for men is less clear.
}
}